


in the brambles

by bluecarrot



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bisexuality, Blackberries, DARK DARK DARK, Gen, I am not my family, No Fluff, No Sex, No Smut, Other, Roommates, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, You Can't Go Home Again, art student, tags scare me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:34:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7433142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/bluecarrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Alex and Burr are college roommates (Art and Poli-Sci, respectively) -- and Alex needs some help at Thanksgiving dinner ... </p><p>note -- this is not a cheerful fluff thing.<br/>racism, homophobia, some curse words, lots of family nastiness, nothing explicit but it's heavily implied.</p><p>written 7/8/16, mostly at work (over lunch, i swear! oh god please don't fire me)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the brambles

**Author's Note:**

> This was sort of meant as a gift for Arrows, because "art student AU", but it's too damn depressing so, um  
> i'll write you something pretty, k?

 

 

"You want to use me to make your father hate you?"

"Don't turn around and glare at me; I told you to hold still. And no, I don't need you to make him hate me. He already hates me. I just want to piss him off a little." Alex is drawing quick, working fast so he doesn't overthink either the conversation or the sketch; he wants to respond honestly. He wants to see things as they are.

For example: the tension in Burr's jawline. The rough curve of his lower lip.

"He's your father. He loves you. You should treat him with respect." Burr speaks to the wall, his voice is bland. He's probably angry. He holds the pose anyway.

Alex works faster. "He doesn't love me."

"He's your _father_ \--"

"That doesn't mean shit."

A long silence. Alex uses it to carefully, carefully outline and fill in the dark, motionless eye.

"I'm sorry," says Burr.

"You're an orphan," says Alex. "You have it worse." He adds a few lines to suggest the crisp folds of a button-down shirt, wondering as he does why Burr always looks like he is just coming back from a meeting of the Young Republicans.

"That's an unjust comparison for both of us. And maybe untrue. Aren't you finished yet?"

"I am finished." He isn't, quite, but Burr's part is over. He adds a few details of white charcoal -- delicately lifts some too-heavy graphite with a kneaded eraser -- glances at the clock (he's spent three extra minutes on this five-minute-sketch) -- and scrawls the date. His name. _Alex H_.

Characteristically, Burr remains quiet; then he says: "is this a black thing or a gay thing?"

"What?"

"Will your father hate me because I'm black or because I'm gay -- well, pretending to be gay?"

"Oh. The gay thing. Definitely the gay thing."

"Good," says his roommate. "I get tired of unbilled cameos in  _Guess Who's Coming To Dinner_. At least this will be a change of scenery."

 

The house is docile, unassuming, white-slatted. 

A dense line of forest comes up close behind.

Alex sits in his car and stares at the house. He does not move.

"You don't have to do this."

"I do."

"You don't have to do it _like this_."

" _You_ don't have to do it," says Alex. "You can back out. I -- I shouldn't have dragged you in this mess. You're right. I'm an ass. I'll drive you ... somewhere. Um. You can borrow the car. Go for a drive. Just come back and get me in a few hours. You're right. I won't do it. I won't do anything. I'll have supper and leave and you'll get me and we'll forget this ever happened, not that it did, which is definitely for the best."

"Hamilton, calm down. Are you afraid of him?" 

There is no judgment in his tone -- there almost never is, Burr doesn't _do_ openly judgmental _._ Burr doesn't do _open_ , period. They've barely ever had a full conversation since they were first matched as roommates, and Alex can count the personal things Burr has shared with him on one hand and still have fingers left over: _orphan, not really a drinker, I like politics._

And he's not gay, apparently. Add that to the list.

But he is calm and patient and he holds still and lets Alex sketch him, which is more than his friends do, and he didn't so much as arch an eyebrow when Alex came out -- 

 

"I'm Alex Hamilton. I'm your roommate. I'm bisexual. And I'm an artist." That last with some stubbornness.

"Burr," said Burr. He shifted a canvas bag from his shoulder to the floor and held out a cool hand to the sweaty, disheveled Alex, rumpled and tired from moving in. "Poli-sci. Do you introduce yourself like that to everyone?"

"I leave off the 'roommate' part, usually. But yeah."

"Interesting," said Burr. "Which side of the room do you want?"

And that was that.

 

Now Alex rubs his palms on the steering-wheel cover and tries, again, to calm down.

"Are you afraid? Why did you change your mind?"

"He won't shoot you or anything. He won't do _anything_ to you."

"That's not what I asked you. And it's not what I meant."

Alex cannot answer. He cannot sort out all the ways his father might hurt him; he does not know what to be afraid of; he does not know if he is afraid at all. He doesn't want to be afraid. "I'm not afraid," he says. "I just don't want to do this. We'll just have dinner. It'll be fine." It won't be fine. It will be awful. But ignoring the dragon is much, much easier than battling it, and he doesn't have the strength, he really does not, not when he's already feeling sick at its shadow. 

"I'm fine," he says again.

Burr smiles. It looks out of place in this car, in this discussion; it looks treasonous, it looks like he's thinking about poisoning a king, and it is not directed at Alex. "Then let's go."

 

"Alexander."

"Hey, dad."

They do not embrace; they do not smile and laugh; they do not do anything. They just stare at each other.

Alex looks away first. "This is my roommate. Aaron Burr."

"Good to meet you, Aaron," says Alex's father.

"Burr, please," says Burr. "It's very nice to meet you after all this time, sir."

Mr Hamilton's eyes flicker. "'After all this time?' Does Alexander talk about me?"

"Sometimes."

"Only good things, I hope." His tone is jovial, his eyes are tight.

Burr smiles -- the same expression he wore in the car. It looks different here; it coordinates with the wallpaper. "Is there anything else to say about you?"

 

"Alexander hasn't come home _once_ since he left for school. It's like he was running away from home. Used to do that all the time as a kid -- pack a bag full of toys and run into the woods and hide until I found him. I bet you're a better son than that, Aaron. You look like you don't make trouble for your parents. Articulate. Polite. You need to give my son lessons. Why aren't you home with your own family?"

"My parents are dead." No smile that time. "Thank you, but I've never found Hamilton to need lessons in how to talk; he does well enough on his own."

"Hamilton? You call him Hamilton?" A snort. "What, _Alexander_ isn't a good enough name for you? It was my father's own name, you know."

Burr looks at his roommate and out comes another one of those smiles, softly creeping over him, reaching his eyes this time, like they share a secret. "I call him  _Alex,_ sometimes. On special occasions."

_Alexander_  wants to crawl under the table. He clears his throat. "Burr --"

"Oh, I think your father would want to know about us. He seems like an open-minded sort of guy." He's dropped the smile but he holds on to his steak knife, just touching it with two fingers, like he's reminding himself there is a weapon nearby if he needs something more than eyes and tone of voice and insinuation.

It's unthinkable that Burr would stab someone; it might wrinkle his shirt.

" _What_ should I know?" Mr Hamilton is gone quiet.

Alex stands up. He knows that voice. He feels sick all over. He wants to run. He's always had this reaction, this powerlessness, this essential bone-deep urge towards  _flight._ He'll argue with anyone -- fight anyone, at anytime, over any excuse -- anyone except his father. He hasn't really changed, even with all those weeks at school and away from this house; he thought he'd cut off some cancerous part of himself and left it here, here with the green-grey paint, peeling around the windows, and he didn't leave it at all, it's still open and bleeding. He wants to vomit, he wants to fly -- run -- to escape into the woods and hide, hide, find a thicket and a bramble and pull the thorns shut behind him, let his hands bleed, jerk his shirt away in a panic while that voice comes closer and he shuts his eyes like it'll help him disappear entirely --

 

_You'd better be hiding real good, Alexander, because when I find you --_

 

Burr stands too, more controlled and more graceful than Alex ever is; his height and presence and the everlasting _calm_  he brings are almost as good as the hand he's got on Alex's shoulder, now, not warning him to stay quiet but giving him something solid, something to put his back against. Someone who only knows blackberry brambles as food and prickly annoyance, not a protection, not a possibility. Burr, whose parents died so long ago he has no memories of them, only names and pictures and the legacy. Burr, whose losses have been quick and complete.

"We're together, sir. We're dating."

Alex's father gives Burr a once-over, and his voice, when he does speak, is low and scornful: "I don't believe it. He would never go for someone like you. And you would never go for Alexander. My son is a ... pansy." They all hear the unexpurgated version of that sentence. "You _dress_ like a fucking fruitcake, Aaron, but you look like you have some backbone under that stiff collar."

"A fruitcake?" Burr says, and he's actually got some emotion now in that mild tone: he sounds startled. Almost amused. "Hamilton, you never told me --"

"Your clothes are fine," says Alex. "Ignore him. Let's go. You don't need this. I --"  _I didn't want to drag you into this,_ he wants to say. _I didn't know I couldn't deal with this by myself. I didn't know I was this weak. I didn't know he was still right about me._

He hears his own voice breaking and the things he wants to say are perfectly audible, he hears them, _everyone_ hears them, and Burr turns to him and frowns.  "Stop that," he says.

Alex tries and fails to shrug off that hand. "Leave me alone. I'm fine."

"Oh, don't worry about him. Alexander cries all the time. Haven't you seen it yet? Has the baby finally learned to hide his wet little tears?"

"Stop that," says Burr again, to Alex. "Hamilton? Stop."

Alex swallows. His throat is burning and he _refuses_ to cry but there it is anyway, the heaviness against his eyes, against his will, another betrayal: "Let's go."

"Not yet. Sir, I don't much care what you think of me --"

"What your mother would say to you, boy, I do not know. My god," and there's a flat darkness in his face now; Alex actually steps backwards and into Burr, who puts his arm around his waist and says again:

"Shh. Stop."

He can't get away. He can't run fast enough, hide fast enough, before this comes down on him again. But there's another way to hide and he hasn't gone there in years but it comes back like it's been waiting for him all this time, thicker and deeper than any tangle of branches, he just needs to crawl into it and let it close behind him and then he won't ever feel the fist, the belt, the words. He can pull back from his own body and hide in his mind.

Burr's hand is on his hip; his fingers curl into Alex's flesh and holds him still, hold him right where he is. A limb caught in a trap. He can't get free, he can't disappear, he can't _hide_. The old desperation chokes him, he's got to leave, no Burr, _no_ \-- he has got to get out. He has got to shut down or he will go mad. He can feel it like the edge of a knife, waiting for him, always waiting. It's so close by and so beautiful, he could choose it so easily -- He pulls at that hand, fingers scrabbling for purchase. He can't get it off. "Burr. _Let go_."

"You want to _go?_  What, you gonna run away again? Fine. Go. Get out of my sight. Both of you -- disgusting, fucking disgusting, make me want to  _puke_. You should be locked up. You should be _shot."_

"Fuck you," says Burr, in that polite voice with the calm smile tucked away, and he takes Alex's hand. 

They're not quite out the door when something explodes on the wall next to them -- a glass or a plate.

Burr keeps walking and he's still got hold of Alex and together they leave.

 

Burr opens the passenger-side door and physically pushes in his roommate; he sits in the driver's seat himself, locks the doors, adjusts the mirror, and reverses out unto the street.

It's several minutes before Alex can think. 

His first thought is: _Where the fuck is he going?_

The second is that Burr hasn't even looked over.

The third is that he's been crying, and it's probably been noisy, and now his nose is running and -- fuck.

He swears under his breath and rubs his nose on the back of his hand. It makes everything worse. "Fuck," he says out loud, and chokes on the noise. _Fuck_. "Um. Do you -- do you have -- I need to --"

Burr shifts, using his knee to guide the steering wheel; he wiggles around a moment and gets a handkerchief out and hands it over. 

It's a real handkerchief. It's linen. And it's embroidered, initialized. Alex can't use it; he'll get it dirty. "Um. Thanks." He stares down at it.

"Stop worrying and blow your goddamn nose."

So Alex does. 

It's noisy. He's humiliated all over again.

"Burr, you didn't have to --"

"He's an asshole," says Burr.

"I didn't want you to --"

"Shut up."

That's ... rude. Burr was rude. It's surprising enough to make him stop talking. 

And then Burr pulls over to the side of the road. He keeps his hands on the wheel, though, and he's not looking at Alex, he's just breathing steadily. He doesn't talk.

"I'm sorry I got all -- you know." _Sniff, sniff._  God, this is awful. He feels like a useless child."It's ... he's a little difficult. And I'm a crybaby."

"So what?"

"... sorry?"

"So. What. So you cry. You cry over those awful commercials with the shelter animals and you cry when your fuckhead of a father says terrible,  _horrible_ things and you cry when another black man is shot during a traffic stop. That doesn't make you _weak_. That doesn't make you a -- pansy. It doesn't make me hate you."

"It doesn't make you like me, either."

Burr makes a strangled noise in his throat. "When did he stop beating you?"

"I -- why do you think --"

"Answer the fucking question."

Something in Burr's voice is hard and cold; Alex flinches back.

And Burr sees it. He says again, in a new voice: "When is the last time he hit you?"

"Um. Sep -- August. End of August."

"The last time he saw you."

"Yes."

"Right before you went to university."

The night before, actually. Alex flinches again, trying to get away from the memory inside his own skull.

"Stop," says Burr again, in that new voice. He reaches out and takes Alex's left hand with his own, pulling him closer, pulling their bodies together, and now Alex is crying again into that perfect Young Republican shirt and Burr is rubbing his back, resting his cheek on Alex's head, saying _shhh_.

"You don't know," Alex finally chokes out. "You don't _know_. What you saw -- that wasn't -- and I still have to come home -- holidays, and all summer --"

"You can come with me. You don't ever need to see him again."

"He's my father."

"It doesn't matter."

Alex pulls away, straightening up. "You don't want me around, clogging up your life. I'm messy and I talk too much and I leave pencil shavings all over."

"You certainly do. Do my clothes bother you?"

"No." Well. Maybe. He blows his nose again and makes a face at the volume. "You're a little bit stuffy."

Burr leans back, stretching against the seat. "You know why I dress like this? It's camouflage. Makes me look a little bit more _white_. If I get pulled over for not using a turn signal and I'm looking like this,  _maybe_ they won't shoot me. If they take me to jail, being 'articulate' and polite and sir and ma'am-ing everyone ... it helps. You know this stuff, you do some of it, but you can pass. I can't."

Alex looks at his own scruff and looks at Burr and can't think of anything to say.

"There are different kinds of abuse," says Burr, "but they all do the same thing. They're meant to beat you down. They're meant to make you submit. Do you remember what you said to me the first time I met you? The very first fucking thing you said? You said _I'm Alex_ and _I'm bisexual_ and  _I'm an artist_ , all in the same breath, like you were ready to fight me about any of them. Even your name. You were ready to fight me over your  _name._ And it was _Alex._ Not _Hamilton_ , not _Alexander_. Because your father calls you Alexander. So you cut it down short and clean and neat and you made it your own and if you don't think that matters, if you think you're weak because you are _affected,_ then you're an idiot." He stops. "And I know you're not an idiot." 

Burr is still not looking at him. He stares right ahead, into the growing darkness, and Alex cannot not turn away from that profile. 

"You're a lot of things," Burr says, sounding wry and almost disapproving, "but you're not an idiot. You don't tilt at windmills. If you're fighting, there's something to fight."

"Burr --"

"I know you told me to let it go. And I thought about it. I heard you telling me you weren't scared of him and I thought you sounded more like you were telling yourself. And then -- Alex, the way he talked about you --" Burr stops, swallows, goes on. His voice is strange and taut. "I'm sorry; I should have done what you said. But I couldn't let you cry in front of him one more time, not when you didn't want to do it. I couldn't just stand there and watch you break down like it was _okay_."

Alex can't speak for a minute. "You touched me. You didn't have to do that. I mean, for me. He would have been mad anyway. He would have believed it anyway. Just because he wanted to believe it. Just because he wants to hate me. Any excuse would be good enough. You didn't need to do that for me." Because Burr has never touched him, ever, not once in three months of living together in a single cramped room. Never brushed his shoulder passing by, or tapped him to get his attention, or ... anything. Never. 

Burr says: "I wanted to touch you."

Alex swallows. "You called me Alex. You never called me that before."

"You never bothered to tell me it -- bothers you -- to be called something else."

"Aaron Burr, why didn't you ever touch me before?" 

"I didn't want to do it before."

_Do you want to do it again?_  Alex wants to say, and can't. Instead he says: "Burr -- you're not _gay._ "

"No. I'm not." A pause. "Neither are you."

He's still looking forward. Alex can only see the line of an elegant cheekbone, dark against darkness, and the softer, paler, somehow  _different_ tones of eyelid, nostril, lip. Burr is beautiful, rising from the dim light, and Alex wants his charcoal pencil so badly he can almost feel it in his hands. He could draw this; he could _capture_ Burr like this, here, on the edge.

He's afraid to speak or move. Anything might upset the balance.

Without looking over, Burr stretches out an arm. He finds Alex's hand. Their fingers curl around each other, reflexively, like a pair of raindrops settling together, like a tacit understanding.

"Burr --"

"Shh," says Burr. "It's okay, Alex. It's _okay_. You're safe. You don't need to fight right now."

**Author's Note:**

> i am somewhat less depressing & have much ~~worse~~ more interesting grammar over on [tumblr](http://littledeconstruction.tumblr.com/)


End file.
